BNW Deity Tier List

On the score vs. turn time issue, you should take a look at the current HOF Major Gauntlet, where the designated victory condition is time victory/score. It is interesting to see players used to quick turn-time victories having to engage in the most convoluted strategies to avoid winning a culture victory before turn 500 (including giving away cities, nerfing their culture and otherwise undermining their game to avoid winning too early).

From my perspective, I doubt the game designers intended for players to go out of their way to avoid winning the game, when victory is naturally presented, in order to get to turn 500 to see how high they can get their score. The game certainly allows that to happen, but if it was intended that you only play for score, why offer other victory conditions?

The answer, of course, is to allow the player to make of the game what the player wants. If you want to see how quickly you can get a science or domination victory on a given map, knock yourself out. If you want to win a game by culture but only after every city on the map has been converted to your religion, go for it. If you want to see how high your score can be when winning a time victory, that's great too.
 
I think the scoring system is broken, anyway, as evidenced by the highest scores in the HOF being Attila duel map cheese wins. Furthermore, there's no reward for efficiency. If I can win with half the army you need to win with, requiring less cities, less population, less money, less wonders to do it, I'm not rewarded for that efficiency. Instead I'm penalized. Except for the score boost for early victory... which I think there is, right? I've never tested that theory. All I know is that my most efficient wins in my personal HoF are some of my lowest scores. My t350 domination win with Giant Death Robots is twice the score of my t200 win with artillery. And one required *MUCH* more skill than the other to pull off.

Ultimately, this is my problem with the scoring system. It rewards arbitrary things IMHO.

I recognize however, that there needs to be some way to handle scoring, especially in MP. If you somehow ran out of time in MP, it matters.

Regardless, though, I think outside of Time Victories, turn time is the most significant indicator of skill. Yes, there's a component of luck at the low end. A t60 domination win vs a t70 win might be entirely a matter of map layout, especially if it's the same player both times. But, a t60 win vs a t150 win is a matter of skill.

I know this is a tired argument, but if you were to take a typical game of the month, where one player wins on t250, and another wins on t140, I guarantee you, without question, that the player who won on t140 could have more population, more social policies, better technology, more money, faith, culture, tourism, ETC. if he had chosen to delay his victory until t250.

This is the crux of the issue. Efficient play leads to earlier victory, but ALSO leads to more *dominating* victory. I recognize not all players play for faster turn times, but when you've beaten every difficulty level, including Deity, the only thing left is playing for faster turn times, or artificial conditions. Like, win Domination without using Industrial or later units, or win a culture victory without The Internet, or, Domination where the rule is you can't take a city until you have Atomic Era units, etc. etc... I enjoy artificial conditions like this, they keep the game interesting after winning is no longer a challenge. As does going for faster times. Or winning without opening Liberty or Tradition. Whatever. It's not simply a matter of ego and players wanting to compare sizes. :p I'm competing against *myself*, trying to beat my previous best efforts.

I don't have a problem with people playing the game for different reasons. Heck, right now, I'm basically only playing to fill out the Vene/Vidi/Vici(sp?), I play maybe one or two games that aren't gauntlets each month. (Usually to get my deity fix)

So, I'm not criticizing people who play for different reasons. Anyway, I think I lost my train of thought on this response. Back to work. :p
 
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This is the crux of the issue. Efficient play leads to earlier victory, but ALSO leads to more *dominating* victory.

Really...hmmm? I don't know since the term "efficiency" is very loosely defined...

Is horse archer/war chariot rush efficient? Is ICS sacred sites efficient? Granted, they are gambits which get you fast wins if they work out (but backfire if they don't), but by far your winning screenshot might have less faith, culture, and happiness, or even science than a player who played normally but still hasn't ended the game. (who knows your winning screenshot might show you one turn away from having one of your capitols recaptured, but you managed to stumble past the finish line)

This is especially true for CV... (Satellites or Internet first? Go to artillery before hotels?) Safety or Speed? (I think no one will argue that a lot of times speed is sacrificed for safety. It depends on how risky the player wants to play (and the contest sometimes becomes who can cut it the closest) The winning screenshot (how dominating the player is in tourism) does not seem to correlate by your logic that well because the AI behavior varies widely from game to game... (fastest win times actually have only modest faith output and sometimes much lower tourism and had they been given an extra 50 turns even there is no way their faith output will rise to 100fpt from 30 for example)
 
Well, from player to player it may not hold up, but it does for me. When I'm really playing well, I finish faster. I'm not talking about gambits, but just, doing everything right:

When I get my cities out fast, my libraries up fast, NC out fast, archers up fast, scouting done quickly, lots of workers fast, etc. etc. etc. the end result is usually faster education, faster sci theory, faster research labs and faster victory.

For cultural victory, faster airports (in my experience) lead to faster win times. Faster internet leads to faster win times. Getting factories up quickly and archaeologists up quickly = faster win times.

All of this is about *efficiency*... micromanaging trades, tech order, build order, workers, etc.

It's about timing, saving gold for the right reasons, making sure you aren't bottlenecked by production, gold, faith or whatever.

Efficiency. IMHO.

And, to make a point: If I can rush-buy research labs on t190, I'm kicking ass. I could choose to slow down and it would just make my victory that much more dominant. If I can rush-buy Universities on t100, I'm kicking ass. If I have a 4-city NC out by t70, I'm kicking ass. This, to me, isn't about taking risks. It's about playing well.

Now, when you talk about gambits, well, horse archer rush isn't a gambit, neither is artillery rush, neither is CB rush. If you're not *good* at it, there's a chance you'll fail sure, but frankly, in my experience, if I capture 3 capitals and need to take break, I'm still usually no worse off than if I hadn't. In the context of domination. Because, maybe I'll get artillery 20 turns later, but I have 3 less capitals to take. And I have 3 more (good) cities producing for me.

Sure, I'm at risk for counter-attack. I'm screwed diplomacy-wise. That hurts, for sure. But the AI sucks at combat, so the counter-attack doesn't scare me. The "safety vs speed" argument has never made sense to me because when I'm struggling to cap that last city on t160 (because I played inefficiently and didn't win 50 turns earlier), I still own 6 capitals, and there's zero chance of losing.

Moriarte once said something that really struck home. He suggested you play out every game where you think it's lost. I did that for a while and quickly discovered that the AI is just so bad that almost no game is lost. Most people give up too early. But regardless, there really aren't many "gambits" other than sacred sites that are "risky"... it usually comes down to skill. Risk implies chance. If I fail at CB rush, it's always because I didn't play well.. IMHO.

All I know is that shaving 5 turns off a victory is *usually* about doing something better than you used to. More efficiently, better timing, or better planning. Timing your Oxford bulb to go off in time for Plastics, or whatever. That just flat out shaves 7 turns or so. I dunno. I guess like I said I'm comparing myself to myself. And I win more quickly than I used to not because I'm taking risks, but because I'm better at the game than I used to be. I'm better at knowing when that worker steal with a scout will result in a dead scout and no worker. I'm better at timing my library builds, choosing what to spend my cash on, etc.
 
I recognize not all players play for faster turn times, but when you've beaten every difficulty level, including Deity, the only thing left is playing for faster turn times, or artificial conditions.
It's very true what clearly some people can't understand. At some point where because of your skills already at the start game you know that you will win it is no longer fun. You need challenges. Therefore, it is something like GOTM or HOF on this site.
 
Well, from player to player it may not hold up, but it does for me. When I'm really playing well, I finish faster. I'm not talking about gambits, but just, doing everything right:

When I get my cities out fast, my libraries up fast, NC out fast, archers up fast, scouting done quickly, lots of workers fast, etc. etc. etc. the end result is usually faster education, faster sci theory, faster research labs and faster victory.

For cultural victory, faster airports (in my experience) lead to faster win times. Faster internet leads to faster win times. Getting factories up quickly and archaeologists up quickly = faster win times.

All of this is about *efficiency*... micromanaging trades, tech order, build order, workers, etc.

It's about timing, saving gold for the right reasons, making sure you aren't bottlenecked by production, gold, faith or whatever.

Efficiency. IMHO.

And, to make a point: If I can rush-buy research labs on t190, I'm kicking ass. I could choose to slow down and it would just make my victory that much more dominant. If I can rush-buy Universities on t100, I'm kicking ass. If I have a 4-city NC out by t70, I'm kicking ass. This, to me, isn't about taking risks. It's about playing well.

Now, when you talk about gambits, well, horse archer rush isn't a gambit, neither is artillery rush, neither is CB rush. If you're not *good* at it, there's a chance you'll fail sure, but frankly, in my experience, if I capture 3 capitals and need to take break, I'm still usually no worse off than if I hadn't. In the context of domination. Because, maybe I'll get artillery 20 turns later, but I have 3 less capitals to take. And I have 3 more (good) cities producing for me.

Sure, I'm at risk for counter-attack. I'm screwed diplomacy-wise. That hurts, for sure. But the AI sucks at combat, so the counter-attack doesn't scare me. The "safety vs speed" argument has never made sense to me because when I'm struggling to cap that last city on t160 (because I played inefficiently and didn't win 50 turns earlier), I still own 6 capitals, and there's zero chance of losing.

Moriarte once said something that really struck home. He suggested you play out every game where you think it's lost. I did that for a while and quickly discovered that the AI is just so bad that almost no game is lost. Most people give up too early. But regardless, there really aren't many "gambits" other than sacred sites that are "risky"... it usually comes down to skill. Risk implies chance. If I fail at CB rush, it's always because I didn't play well.. IMHO.

All I know is that shaving 5 turns off a victory is *usually* about doing something better than you used to. More efficiently, better timing, or better planning. Timing your Oxford bulb to go off in time for Plastics, or whatever. That just flat out shaves 7 turns or so. I dunno. I guess like I said I'm comparing myself to myself. And I win more quickly than I used to not because I'm taking risks, but because I'm better at the game than I used to be. I'm better at knowing when that worker steal with a scout will result in a dead scout and no worker. I'm better at timing my library builds, choosing what to spend my cash on, etc.

I think we can all agree that generally playing better (not getting bottlenecked by something and growing and keeping up in tech) is, well, better.

The risks I'm talking about however goes something like this:
1) Do you want to sign that RA with Korea? (something to speed your internet up several turns or so but can your tourism amount keep up with that other cultural runaway and win before he gets his ship?)
2) Want to propose your religion as world religion? Sure, you can do it, but you risk losing OB/routes if DoW comes.
3) Want to wait until your tourism hits max before popping those GM? (mind you there's always a risk of AI popping a GW)
4) Do you want to spend hammers on archaeologists for neighbors (diplo safety) or would you rather be building those research labs?
5) Coup?

Some things are just determined by the RNG, or some other unpredictable factor anyway and the difference it makes may be something up to 10-20 turns in my experience (I've won CVs that could've been 15 turns faster if that stupid unit didn't block my GM and I won with my GM sitting right on the border of my target for example, or somehow my +50% shared religion bonus disappeared because my target civ acquired new cities through war). If the margin of error is this large, you'd best not read too much into only modest differences in turn times. Sure, a t220 victory is 99.99% better play than a t300 one, but I'm not so sure about, say, t240 and t260.
 
Fair point. I think 20 turns is within the range of how much random factors influence the outcome. That's about the limit though.

Well to be fair, deity cv is highly dependent on AI culture output, but you can reliably limit that if you plan for it. It does slow things down to attempt to cripple a runaway, so I concede that in that particular case the variance can be a lot greater. And there's no guarantee you can slow them down short of conquest. But that's about the only case where random factors are significant to such a degree. That I can think of.
 
I think the single greatest variable is map conditions, though, so I'm not sure how much the turn-time analysis contributes to keeping things fresh. Unless you're competing directly with other people on turn times, you're going to get wildly different results each game. And for me, the changing circumstances is what keeps things fresh.

I mean, my average game on standard speed takes more than entire week to play through, and I think I play this game a fair number of hours per day. If I am comparing T150 starts, it's quicker, but from game to game the lay of the map, opponents, CS's lead each game to being so much different from the next. I just don't complete games at a speedy enough clip to be kicking myself over a T270 win versus a T250 one. Even if I did notice a difference, I'd probably be able to attribute at least 20-30 turns of it to tile quality in Capital.
 
I base that 20 turn number on experience from gauntlets and gotm. That tends to be the difference between the top scores and the rest of the field. But given that this is consistent between gauntlets (with infinite rerolls) and gotm (where the only random factors are after the start), I tend to believe that skill plays a larger factor than people believe.

Also, given the propensity for the same person to win gotm and/or gauntlets repeatedly, it's hard to claim that they're just "luckier". ;)

The only alternative explanation to consistency is that the winners are cheating somehow. And since klaskeren (for example) posts videos of his playthroughs, you can pretty much rule that out too.

Nonetheless, when you examine save games and or screenshots of winning games in the HoF, they almost always have great starting dirt. So it does matter. I just think that skill ends up being the determining factor. Petra/floodplain starts are more powerful in the hands of someone skilled, because they're better at taking advantage of that great start. A lot of the mid-range scores in a gauntlet had great starts too..
 
I have been looking on Morocco recently and I cant figure it out why are they so high. They get 3 gold and 1 culture for a trade route with a new civ, so when there are 7 opponents - thats 7x3=21 gpt if everyone sends them one which is unrealistic. I dont think that some patetic 30 gpt + 10 culture per turn are worth much and they need to send their TR to CS - to maximize the bonus.

Please explain to me the Morocco bonuses and why you see them so high.
 
Their UA gives a lot of diplomatic buffs early on. They get a desert start so they always have a good chance at securing a religion. Their UI and UU are both especially attuned to their start bias and collectively make Morocco almost impossible to invade through the Renaissance and Industrial.

So what you get is a civ that is unlikely to have to fight an early war, who gets large defensive bonuses in later eras.

Their UA, UU and UI synergise nicely to promote a turtling strategy across land that other players aren't going to want very much any way.
 
I have been looking on Morocco recently and I cant figure it out why are they so high. They get 3 gold and 1 culture for a trade route with a new civ, so when there are 7 opponents - thats 7x3=21 gpt if everyone sends them one which is unrealistic. I dont think that some patetic 30 gpt + 10 culture per turn are worth much and they need to send their TR to CS - to maximize the bonus.

Please explain to me the Morocco bonuses and why you see them so high.

Essentially other Civs are more likely to send you TR. In addition to a "pathetic 30 gpt +10 culture" you get in the very early game you also get 4-5 beakers per TR very early in the game. More TR means more early science, early science is the best thing in the game.
 
I have been looking on Morocco recently and I cant figure it out why are they so high. They get 3 gold and 1 culture for a trade route with a new civ, so when there are 7 opponents - thats 7x3=21 gpt if everyone sends them one which is unrealistic. I dont think that some patetic 30 gpt + 10 culture per turn are worth much and they need to send their TR to CS - to maximize the bonus.

Please explain to me the Morocco bonuses and why you see them so high.

Getting the early gold is so important. But you have to do something with them. The best way is to take patronage asap and go down the increased influence for gold gifts and scholasticism. Morocco can monopolize city states earlier than anyone else. CSes are where you are going to get most of the benefits from. The culture from trade routes is few but they do help finishing your primary tree quickly and get into patronage faster.
 
Essentially other Civs are more likely to send you TR. In addition to a "pathetic 30 gpt +10 culture" you get in the very early game you also get 4-5 beakers per TR very early in the game. More TR means more early science, early science is the best thing in the game.

Are you sure about this? I have played a couple of games with Marocco on King/Emperor difficulty and the AI seems to shun my cities like a plague when it comes to trade routes. They should be more eager to send trade routes, which would be a great boon in itself, but I have not seen this in practice. Is the AI perhaps more eager to send trade routes to weaker civs?
 
The Trade Routes bonus aren't only for civs, but for CS too! So you can have more than 21 gpt and 7 culture!
Also Kasbahs or whatever, with Petra is pretty awesome!
 
I'm gonna come out here and suggest bumping the Ottomans down. Breaking them down, they're just so...meeeeh.
Let's start with the Sipahi. While the bonuses it gets aren't poor, they're also the kind of bonuses that don't get an entire civ out of the bottom of the barrel, leave alone a single unit. And it's a Lancer. Having one for scouting purposes isn't a bad idea but all in all you have a unit that you rarely actually need, with bonuses that aren't a gamechanger.
Then the Janissary. On paper, they're a fantastic unit. In practice...not so much. They fall in the Buffed Up Meatshield catagory and while offensively they're good, they're really nothing special on the defense, even with the killing = healing ability. They also don't have a particulary long shelf life. Really, they suffer the same issue every unit in the Infantry section has - Meatshield with a long shelf life = Meh.
Now, the UA, which is supposedly where the Ottomans shine. But they really don't. Having the stealing ability on Triremes is near pointless as naval war in that era is nigh useless. Sure a Trireme or two can surprise-grab a city that gets pelted down, but they won't win you the war. Nor will a fleet of them. On Caravels the ability LOOKS nice, but they are outclassed within the blink of an eye. The real era of naval combat starts with the entrance of Frigates and Privateers. And that's a problem, because at that point, EVERY civ has access to the Ottoman's ability. Most, if not all naval domination games are won around the time Frigates and Privateers come online, at which point the Ottoman UA does literally nothing except shave off a bit of coin. Which, at this point in the game, shouldn't be a problem anyway anymore.
The rest of the ships come too late for the UA to really matter, and any civ on the map wanting to go Naval will have a neat stack of Privateers ready for upgrade anyway.
All in all, I think the Ottomans are down close to Denmark. In fact, I think Denmark has better UU's (Janissary might be slightly better, but a Berserker surviving to become Norwegian Ski Infantry is pretty nice) and even a better UA for naval warfare. Or at least COASTAL warfare. The gold savings are just too minute at the point of the game where it matters.
 
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